The Key Importance for Dating of Friendship
Networks

     During the past decade sociologists have published numerous
research studies which have highlighted the importance of informal
friendship networks. One of the key findings to emerge from this work
is the fact that most Americans of both sexes initially meet their future
marriage partners through their friends. Of course, popular folklore
would have us believe that Cupid accomplishes most of his work in
such public places as beaches, bars, discoteques, zoos, etc., and that
employment situations and dating services also provide fertile soil for
the sprouting of incipient romances. The reality of the situation is that
women tend to be quite wary of strangers. The reality of the situation
is that informal friendship networks instigate far more male-female rela-
tionships that eventually lead to cohabitation and/or marriage than do
all of these impersonal meeting grounds put together.
     This represents a social fact of the most profound sort for our
understanding of the plight of love-shy men, and for our efforts to
understand how they got to be love-shy in the first place. Even the best
employment opportunities are obtained some 70 percent of the time
through the proper and effective use of informal social networks. Love
and work, the two most indispensably crucial ingredients of life, are
both a direct byproduct of how successful people are in cultivating highly
satisfying, quality friendship networks. The more solid our friendship
networks are, the more solid will be our satisfactions and rewards in
both LOVE and WORK.
      A related fact is that it is actually easier to meet members of the
opposite sex through friendship networks than through any other means.
It requires a significantly greater amount of courage and self-confidence
to initiate a conversation with a total stranger than it does to initiate one
with someone to whom one has been introduced by a mutual friend. This
is true for the vast majority of people, and it is certainly true for those
with interpersonal anxiety or shyness problems.
      Of course, shyness above and beyond a certain point of severity
prevents a person from ever immersing himself into any informal social
networks. The real rub is that for those who actually enjoy active mem-
bership in informal social networks, substantially less social self-confidence
and "nerve" is required for meeting potential lovers than is required for
people who do not have membership in informal friendship networks.
      In other words, more is actually required of the severely isolated,
love-shy man, than is required of the moderately self-confident man
who has a small network of friends. The former is forced to deal with
impersonal agencies and meeting places if he ever hopes to obtain a
wife. The latter can totally avoid the hard, cold, impersonal world by
depending upon his friendship networks.1